REVIEW: Lamb of God – Resolution

After two decades and seven full length releases, Lamb of God are still as bombastic and explosive as ever. The band’s seventh album, Resolution, is melodic runaway freight train barreling through 14 tracks, rarely granting the listener a reprieve from its furious pace.

While the entire album is a solid, enjoyable effort by Lamb of God, it is the middle four tracks that really stand out as Resolution‘s highlight.

“The Undertow” opens with a teeth jangling guitar lick and stomping bass line, making Randy Blythe’s vocals as he screeches out “I am the one who’s left to take the fall/I fight the constant undertow” sound much more urgent, accusatory. If Blythe’s vocals during the chorus where not enough to make this one of the album’s best track’s the guitar solo by Mark Morton towards the end is pure electrical sex as it arcs and jumps at a furious pace.

Following pedal to the floorboard pace that “The Undertow” created “The Number Six” opens with titanic force. Besides the track’s instrumental magnitude, the track features gang vocals for the line “you dug your own grave” giving the impression that the legion of damned is unforgiving in your pleas of innocence. There are several “breathers” in “The Number Six” where Blythe half speaks, half growls “a relentless imposition by a self-fulfilling travesty/from one who is just rotting there/in slut’s wool and zero history” before the teeth rattling bass and furious guitars comeback in as Blythe roars “aesthetic condemning/erratic condescending.”

“Barbarbosa” provides both a respite from the vicious pace that album has set as well as acting as an instrumental intro to “Invictus.” The track begins with thunderous bass and crashing guitars as Blythe lets out a growl. “Invictus” reminds us that this is a metal album; which means that its supposed to feel like a force of nature. Lamb of God’s method for achieving this is highlighting Blythe’s growls and shouts as well as some of the finest guitar licks by Morton and Willie Adler.

For the closing track on the album “King Me” starts off in an unexpected way: with Blythe half speaking, half growling the lyrics while a woman can be heard singing in the background. The track really does not pick up until two minutes in when Chris Adler, LoG drummer, and John Campbell, LoG bass player, let out a thundering cadence propelling Blythe’s wails into the ether.

In the end ,Resolution will leave you exhausted in the best way possible. The shear titanic force of sound as well as Blythe’s shrieks and wails make it one hell of an album.